


Poetry meme

by ingreatwaters



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Hornblower - C. S. Forester, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, The Quiet Gentleman - Georgette Heyer, Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 03:37:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5952286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingreatwaters/pseuds/ingreatwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rules</p>
<p>1: Pick five fandoms. List them in alphabetical order.</p>
<p>2: Visit this site to find your first RANDOM POEM OF POWER. Write down the 5th line (yes, even if it's an E.E. Cummings poem and you wind up with an apostrophe). Repeat five times and - you guessed it - list 'em in alphabetical order! (No cheating, mind! This is a challenge and it's always been about creativity.)</p>
<p>3: I think you can see where this is going. Write a very quick 50-word half-drabble for each fandom (try to do it all in one sitting - make your brain explode!), using the line from the poem as a prompt. You don't have to include it in the half-drabble - it's just inspiration.</p>
<p>4: Bravo! Have a cookie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poetry meme

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal [here](http://ylla.livejournal.com/391013.html)

**_Georgette Heyer - The Quiet Gentleman_  
(free-throated rhythms)**

Joy and laughter and music are how he thinks of her, swift footsteps and a sweet voice. He is competent at what he does and takes quiet pleasure in his skill, but she shines, even where she lacks skill. The brighter she glows, the more he retreats to the shadows.

**_Hornblower_  
(Indignant—that the Joy was come—)**

He can see the men glancing at him, hear them whispering together, feel the undercurrent of excitement. Even Bush, who should know better, who knows ships and the sea, seems halfway between glee and awe, as if this meeting was of Hornblower's making, and not a mere fluke of luck.

**_Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell_  
(Stare solid into mine)**

Norrell is irritated, sometimes, by how much Childermass seems able to achieve merely by looking at someone. He is the magician, who has spent years in learning and finding, his the books, and power should be his to give - but he finds his servant possessed of another power entirely.

**_Master and Commander_  
(water for coffee, and later the smell)**

Water is becoming precious, more than the coffee ground for it. He wakes half aware in the still ship and wonders if everything can be counted out in drops of liquid, laudanum to sleep and coffee to wake, water for life and the blood he cannot wash from his hands.

**_Watership Down_  
(Rotting there in the rain.)**

Rain and the gibbet and the blood red sky, fur and bones and wood mouldering to nothing in the dim light, dry grass stretching out beyond.

He wakes shaking, pressed against the movement of Hazel's breathing, damp in a trickle of water on the burrow floor, and dreads the day.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't deliberately cheat the list, but I thought the first one was called *A* Quiet Gentleman until I was halfway through, hence the inconsistency in naming! (I've just realised I still got the lines in the wrong order - never mind!)


End file.
